Zaha Hadid Architects just unveiled a curious curvilinear sculpture entitled "Crest" to celebrate the opening of the London Design Festival. Placed on the surface of the V&A’s courtyard’s pool, the thin self-supporting surface is made from a pre-stressed flat aluminum plate. It will remain in the UK capital for the duration of the festival, after which it will be transported to the architects' new project-ME Dubai Hotel, where it will become a permanent part of the space.

The Crest was designed as a demountable sculpture that tests the limits of a new construction technique involving the assembly of aluminum panels into a pre-stressed flat plate which is then lifted into a self-supporting structure. It signifies a connection between east and west. ‘It is a type of process that we’ve never done before, it was an experiment and about achieving a price form as thin as possible. This is the thinnest shell structure we have built to date,’ said Melodie Leung, Associate at Zaha Hadid Architects.

The new ME Dubai will be located in the Opus building in the Burj Khalifa District and will have 100 rooms, four penthouse suites with private terraces and the brand’s signature Suite ME. It will also have a Michelin-star restaurant.